Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

"Naon children, 1912." Romulo Naon Jr., son of the Argentinean ambassador, and siblings. I can't shake the feeling that some Goreyesque mishap is about to befall these gloomy tots. Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.

It's December 1962 and family and friends have gathered for a near-Christmas dinner. I've just gotten my first 35mm camera, a Kodak Retinette, and with the help of my trusty Kodak Master Photoguide, manage to ace this Kodachrome bounce-flash exposure. That's me, age 16, strategically positioned in front of my father, who's still in his supermarket work garb, so it's obviously not Christmas day. Next to me in front are Aunt Grace and Uncle Jack, my mother's oldest brother. At the time I probably thought his shirt/tie combo was corny, but now I love it. Mother's on the left looking pleased, perhaps because the serendipitous arrival of identical cards made for a pleasing symmetry in her card tree on the wall. In back, my brother and our friends Colleen and Bob. Bob had been my brother's Cal Poly college mate, and later lived with us a bit before marrying Colleen. View full size.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.